Asia Forum To Educate Businessmen

Harvard will continue its ongoing effort to educate American businessmen about East Asia in a closed conference on Korean international relations that begins here today.

Approximately 50 executives from major American corporations including IBM and General Electric will pay $350 apiece to attend the two day conference, which includes seminars led by 20 University scholars, and two guest speakers.

The first conference of the series met in October 1976 to discuss the broad area of U.S.-East Asian relations.

Executive Tutorials

Morrison L. Edwards, executive chairman of the conference and development manager for the Program for Harvard and East Asia, described the seminars yesterday as "high-priced tutorials for businessmen who want to learn about the historical context of their work."

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Sen. Donald M. Fraser (D-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on International Organizations which is currently investigating all aspects of U.S.- South Korean relations, will address the businessmen at lunch today.

Fraser will discuss U.S. policy towards East Asia and describe the scope of the Senate investigation, outlining only the evidence the committee received before the investigation began last month, Robert Boettcher, staff director for the committee, said yesterday.

William Gleysteen, senior deputy secretary of state and an expert on Sino-American relations, will be the guest speaker at the dinner meeting this evening.

"We are trying to develop channels of communication between scholars and commercial business men in the interest of broadening their backgrounds," Roy M. Hofheinz Jr., conference director and professor of Government, said yesterday.

In the current conference "we are going to focus on a much narrower subject than we did in October," Hofheinz added. He stressed the importance of understanding U.S.-Korean relations in light of the allegations over illegal activities by the South Korean government.

The high price of the participation fee is due solely to the expense of "running such an operation," Hofheinz said